Dear HCN,
Your article, “A timber
town rallies for roads’ (HCN, 7/6/98), notes that protesters in
Cascade, Idaho, say the proposed moratorium – which would place a
temporary end to road-building in roadless public forests in the
Interior West – would put the squeeze on local timber supplies and
lead to mill closures.
On July 13, the Idaho
Statesman reported that local timber companies, citing the road
moratorium, warned of impending layoffs. A Boise Cascade
spokesperson said the road moratorium would reduce access to
federal timber. The next day the same paper reported that Boise
Cascade was shutting down four regional
mills.
Was closing the mills good for business?
An investment researcher was quoted as saying, “It (the mill
closures) will have a long-term positive effect on the company’s
bottom line.” The announcement comes at a time when two of the last
three timber sales put up for auction on the Boise National Forest
went without bidders.
A Wall Street Journal
article reported that U.S. lumber prices have declined by 21
percent since last April “when a Japanese consumption-tax increase
touched off a collapse in Japanese housing starts and sent lumber
prices tumbling.” (-Lumber-Price Rally May Hinge on Japan,”
2/17/98). And Bloomberg News Service reported that “Lumber (prices)
for July delivery fell to a two-and-one-half-year low on Monday on
the Chicago Mercantile Exchange because weak demand in Asia has
created a worldwide oversupply of wood.” (-Lumber prices fall as
output increases,” HCN, 6/8/98.)
The planned
Idaho state Reservoir timber sale on the South Fork of the Salmon
River was recently dropped due to low lumber prices. Reduced lumber
prices curtail incentives to buy federal and state timber, even
when it’s offered at below cost. So much for a local timber
“shortage.”
The Boise-based (and Delaware
incorporated) Boise Cascade Corporation is finishing operations in
Mexico (they got some of what they wanted and social tensions are
rising) and is now starting up operations in Brazil and Chile. By
late 1997, the company’s panel plant in Barwick, Ontario, had gone
on line. Is Russia its next frontier? (-Boise Cascade prospects in
Russia for green gold of Siberian forests,” Idaho Business Review,
1/1/96).
Boise Cascade is not unlike any other
timber transnational corporation. Closing local mills hinges as
much or more on its foreign ventures as it does on local
supply.
While the road moratorium is more than
welcome, at least in the Interior West, conservationists – just
like the folks in the town of Cascade – must be reminded that what
happens locally is as likely to be shaped by what happens in the
global economy as it is by policy shifts emanating out of
Washington, D.C. Unfortunately, some of us conservationists are
overly attentive to policy formation or, worse yet, a dreamy-eyed
notion of a self-regulating “free market” to note that “It’s the
economy, stupid,” and a global one at
that.
Don
Smith
Boise,
Idaho
An article, “The
Critical Need for Law Reform to Regulate the Abusive Practices of
Transnational Corporations: The Illustrative Case of Boise Cascade
Corporation in Mexico’s Costa Grande and Elsewhere,” by William A.
Wines and Mark A. Buchanan of Boise State University and Donald J.
Smith, has just been published in the Denver Journal of
International Law and Policy of the University of Denver College of
Law. To obtain the journal call
303/871-6166.
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Global economics swing the West.
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
